Foreign Guest Workers Being Used Instead of Brits Causes Strikes in the UK

Since when does free trade theory mean one is trading people, increasing the labor supply, displacing citizens of a region, repressing wages and avoiding the rights of citizen workers through specialty work visas?

Agreement ends wildcat strikes over foreign workers

A worker celebrates as he and colleagues return to work after voting to end their strike at the Lindsey oil refinery in north Lincolnshire. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The week-long strike over the use of foreign labour at the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire ended today after workers voted to accept a deal, negotiated between unions and management, that will see an additional 102 jobs offered to British workers on the site.

But the strikers, who will return to work on Monday, promised they would take their fight to other refineries employing foreign labour, starting with Staythorpe, in Newark.

What is most amazing is they are claiming Prime Minster Brown is a protectionist for this simple principle:

rown was again forced to defend his phrase "British jobs for British workers" in the Commons after David Cameron, at prime minister's questions, accused him of a lack of judgment and pandering to protectionists' fears.

The prime minister countered: "Can anybody here say that they do not want British workers to get jobs in our country?"

Indeed and more importantly, in what economic theory anywhere does it state it's a good idea to trade people? To global labor arbitrage? That somehow this would not displace workers, wage repress, erode workers rights, flatten all national middle classes?